The Religion and Politics in American Public Life lecture series, co-coordinated for 2014-15 by Professors Courtney Bender, Jean Cohen, Josef Sorett, and John Torpey, is a series of public conversations that explore the often contentious role of religion in American...

Why exactly did the Nazis burn the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany on November 9, 1938? The event has not been adequately accounted for by historians in their large-scale assessments of how and why the Holocaust occurred. In Alon Confino’s new book, A World Without...

This event looks at the contributions of Sufi thought and practice to understandings of pluralism in the Ottoman Middle East, South Asia, and West Africa. Pluralism: Sufi Thought and Practice is the inaugural event in the IRCPL’s Sufi Islam in 21st Century Politics...

Recent developments in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia suggest growing sectarian antagonism as a major cause of violence in the region. Are we witnessing a civil war within the Islamic umma? If so, what are the causes...

Saskia Schäfer, IRCPL Post-Doctoral Researcher, reviews Daniel Ziv’s feature-length documentary Jalanan for New Mandala and places it within the context of Indonesia’s turbulent political climate. Schäfer writes, “Listening: this is what makes Daniel...